Spiritual direction and missional leadership

Here's a very thoughtful reflection, written in the context of a spiritual direction training program, on spiritual direction as a form of missional ministry. A brief excerpt:

Spurning the attractional methods of much of contemporary American Christianity, the missional church is incarnational -- it seeks to be the hands and feet of God at work in the world. Frost and Hirsch say, "By incarnational we mean it does not create sanctified spaces into which unbelievers must come to encounter the gospel. Rather, the missional church disassembles itself and seeps into the cracks and crevices of a society…" (2003) Spiritual direction, at its missional core, is also incarnational in that the spiritual director assists the person seeking direction to see God in all areas of their life and in all aspects of creation. Being an incarnational ministry, a spiritual director has the opportunity, possibly for the first time with some people, to take God for a walk, out of the sanctuary and other sanctified places and into the ordinary, messy, dark and troubling places of the world and of a person's own life.